Delightful Summer

At first we only see their shadows zipping across the baseball bases, which are drawn in chalk on the driveway. Above us black and blue dragonflies circle our heads like little helicopters.

“I catch them!” Matthew shrieks and chases them up and down the driveway.





We planted a vegetable garden and pumpkin patch. To decorate we washed off the rocks that we dug up and painted them to look like bugs.

In early July our town library hosted a “truck day” and Matthew had a ball. He got to sit in a real fire truck, repair line truck, and a police cruiser.

We picked fruit from a local farm all summer, eating almost all the blueberries that we picked during the drive home each trip.

I also became fanatical about a cookbook called The Toddler Café. I learned to cook with all sorts of new-to-me ingredients like nori sheets, beets, um I meant “rocks from outer space” and hoisin sauce. On one night that I was preparing dinner Bob misheard me say hoisin sauce and thought that I said poison sauce.

We got to swim in lakes, the ocean, and my godmother’s pool, which is neat because it’s shaped like a kidney bean.


Bob surprised me with tickets to RENT for my birthday in July. It was the best performance of the show I had ever seen, and yes, I say that every time.
We have a toad living in our backyard, and find him sitting the same old tree stump nearly every day. I named it Old Green Thumbs with the hope I’ll become less frightened by it by summer’s end.

“Mama?” Matthew asked me very seriously one quiet afternoon that we were outside eating popsicles on our deck, “Do peacocks poop?”

We started a new summer tradition of taking a bike ride each morning after breakfast. With Matthew strapped into the toddler seat, I peddle us through the quiet and busy streets of our town and together we count the cars or birds that pass us by.
And now;

“Look at me, Mama!” Matthew holds his arms out the side like wings, and runs along the driveway with the dragonflies still swirling overhead. A true summer delight.